I welcome you warmly to the St. Gellert Festival 2023.  We have some exciting news! The festival established a new ensemble with original period instruments St. Gellert Baroque Players (leader Mónika Tóth) which will give its very first performance in Bakonybél where St. Gellert made his legendary hermetic retreat, exactly 1000 years ago. It is participating in a series of events commemorating the occasion. This all Vivaldi program—since both St. Gellert and Antonio Vivaldi were Venetians—will be repeated two days later at our festival on Saturday the 24th.

Szeged seems to have numerous highly gifted young artists, one of which is the pianist Soma Balázs-Piri who is already considerably profiled through the TV Show Virtuozok. Having followed his development since his debut at our festival back in 2020 in a piano duo evening with Boros Misi, I decided to engage him as soloist for the grand piano concerto in D minor by Mozart with our festival orchestra at the opening concert on Friday the 23rd. With much belief in his talent, I introduced him to my Mozarteum University of Salzburg where he will start his bachelor’s studies around the time of our performance.

On the 25th, we will also be hosting a distinctive chamber concert exclusively featuring members of the Bogany family. Gergely Bogany, already a well-known artist in Szeged, is excited about this rare chance to perform with his older flute sister Bernadett, younger bassoon brother Bence, and his oboist wife Clara, all of whom are also highly acclaimed artists in Europe.

Personally, for me, the most challenging work will be the Beethoven Violin Concerto with Katalin Kokas on the 29th. I believe it is one of the most misunderstood works in the modern day concert repertoire! We want to take the opportunity to completely erase what was heard so far and explore the concerto entirely new, as if it had been just discovered in one of the attics of Beethoven’s apartments in Vienna, a few days ago.

Finally, I would like to sincerely welcome the pianist Támas Érdi, who is scheduled to make his debut at our festival on the second of October, alongside a Polish flutist and a Chinese cellist.  The three soloists will each play a concerto with the festival orchestra under the theme “Let artistic aspirations from Korea, Poland, China and Hungary fuse into one global celebration!” 

I welcome you to the festival 2023 with a sense of excitement!

The St. Gellért Festival promises unique musical journeys.